5 MINUTES WITH...

Comic Vic Reeves, 61, on turning to flower arranging for a new Netflix series where teams create beautiful floral sculptures…

How come you’re doing this?

This was a dream job for me because I only live half an hour away [from the set – in South East England]! It’s perfect. And it sounded like a great idea.

Are you into gardening?

I’ve got a raised herb garden and that fails regularly, so this year I stuck some tomatoes, courgettes and beetroot in, and it all happened. But other than that, I get a gardener in. I’m an art-school boy – if I get a plant’s name right I get excited.

What’s your role on the show?

I go around chatting to the contestants, have a look at what they’re doing and ask them questions. If the judges are giving them a hard time, I’ll try to alleviate that a little bit. Describe the judges...?

Kristen’s [resident judge Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht] hilarious. He’s very good at what he does and he’s a very warm and funny person. He’s not a Simon Cowell by any means – he’s actually got a skill, for a start!

What are the contestants like? There’s a good amount of gardeners who know all the flowers, but there’s quite a lot who are as naive as me! And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show with this amount of big characters in one place. It’s not Gardeners’ World – it’s punkrock gardening. I was looking around and thinking, a lot of the people here could be in bands... Has doing this inspired your creative side?

When we were filming, every day I had nothing to do for four hours in between the opening bit and the wandering around with the judges bit. So, I moved half my studio over to the set and I was painting all the time. That’s another reason why this was the perfect job for me! It really was a dream job, honestly